WORCESTER — A city councilor says he intends to put a hold on City Manager Edward M. Augustus Jr.'s effort to restore powers the Board of Health once had and reorganize the city's public health functions.

Councilor-at-Large Michael T. Gaffney has advised his colleagues of his intention to hold an item at Tuesday night's council meeting in which Mr. Augustus is seeking authorization to file special legislation to allow the city to change its Board of Health from an advisory board to a regulatory one.

Mr. Gaffney said he would like to see the City Council Public Health and Human Services Committee first hold a series of public meetings on the city manager's plan before a vote is taken on authorizing the manager to file the special legislation.

He said he opposes Mr. Augustus' plan because it would effectively remove the City Council from the process of approving regulations relative to public health.

"Not a single city councilor ran for office on a platform of growing and expanding the size of local government, reducing the authority of the City Council, or giving regulatory powers to an unelected body of bureaucrats to issue regulations," Mr. Gaffney said in a statement Monday.

"Such regulation proposed under the (Greater Worcester Region) Community Health Improvement Plan would require sex education for our children (with notice to parents), fluoridation, zoning changes, singling out overweight children at schools for 'treatment,' removing the elderly from their homes as the board deems fit under the guise of safety, as well as creating activist groups and determining public health policy without involving public input," he added.

Mr. Gaffney said case law upholds local health boards' authority to adopt regulations that are more restrictive than state standards so long as the regulations do not conflict with state law and are not specifically preempted.

"If the public desires to have the City Council yield and turn over its regulatory powers, then an open, transparent, and public process similar to the city manager search should be conducted by the Public Health and Human Services Committee," he said.

Mr. Augustus said his recommendation would empower the local health board with all powers of boards of health under state law.

He said the move would return powers to the Board of Health that it once had, rather than having them vested solely in one individual.

The special legislation would also allow for the appointment of a chief executive officer to run the Health Department, as well as create a new position of medical director.

Mr. Augustus pointed out that what he is recommending is something that had been proposed a few years ago by a city task force on public health, after budget cuts forced significant cutbacks in the city's Department of Public Health.

Those cutbacks led to the elimination of the Public Health Department as a free-standing department, as it was reorganized as a division within the city manager's executive office.